Trai seeks stakeholders' views on cloud service issues

Regulator has also sought views on protocol required for cloud service providers

Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (Trai) on Friday issued a consultation paper on cloud computing inviting comments from stake holder on issues ranging regulatory framework that is need for such services, incentives to be provided to promote Indian cloud service providers, security over the cloud and strategies to implement cloud services for the government.

The regulator has also sought views on the protocol required for cloud service providers (CSPs) to "submit to the territorial jurisdiction of India" for offering "lawful access of information".

Trai has initiated this consultation paper to engage the industry and all stakeholders on the key issues referred by the Department of Telecom (DoT), the letter said.

Cloud computing means using a network of remote servers hosted on the Internet to store, manage, and process data, rather than a local server or a personal computer. It is becoming increasingly pervasive as resources like computing power and infrastructure, application platforms and business processes are provided over cloud in real time.

The rapid evolution of processing power, storage technologies and availability of high quality broadband speed and big data have enabled the realization of a new computing model called cloud computing, the letter explained.

In cloud computing, resources such as computing power & infrastructure, application platforms, and business processes are provided through the internet as general utilities to users in an on-demand fashion.

"Business enterprises are now increasingly seeking to reshape their business models to gain benefits from this new paradigm of resource sharing," the letter said.

Trai also asked for the comments on the actions that should be taken in case of national security breach by the cloud service providers.

"What should be the effective guidelines for and actions against those CSPs that are identified to be in possession of information related to commission of a breach of national security of India?," it added.

The issues on which Trai has sought comments from stakeholder include regulatory framework for Cloud Computing, security over the Cloud, cost benefit analysis, quality of service of the cloud services, inter-operability among the cloud players, incentivization for conceptualization and implementation of India based cloud services, legal framework for multiple jurisdictions, areas of operation and implementation strategies of cloud services in government organizations and other strategic networks.

The last date for sending written comments is July 8, while that for counter-comments is July 22, 2016.